melanie boucher

(Apologies in advance to people reading the LJ/DW mirror of this post–Bandcamp embeds don’t work on those sites, so I’m directing traffic for it over to my main site. Click over to the original angelahighland.com post to see the embeds rendering properly.)

Well now, this was a lovely surprise!

Being a fan of Genticorum, and in particular of the work of Alexandre de Grosbois-Garand (and his duo work with his wife Mélisande as well), led me over to finding out about La Prûche Libre, a label for Quebec trad. I saw them posting about a new album via their Facebook page last night–and if I read the post correctly it was in connection with Memoire et Racines this weekend. Which got my interest up, so I clicked over to their Bandcamp page to check it out.

And while I was at it I checked it out this one as well–because the cover art attracted me. The singer totally made me think “HEY, she’s a brunette Shenner!” Those of you who know me from my Star Wars MUSH days may remember that my character Shenner was in fact a redheaded version of Karen Allen in the Star Wars MUSH movie in my brain, so this is really a roundabout way of the singer reminding me of Karen Allen. Regardless, it caught my eye! So then I actually played some of the tracks, and decided yes, her voice is lovely, so I wanted the music too.

Last but not least I had to grab this one by a quartet called La Cantinière. It’s not even out yet but I’m making a point of pre-ordering it, since it’s involving three of the gentlemen previously involved with La Volée d’Castors–who y’all may recall are one of the major Quebec bands I’ve been adoring for a while now. Those guys are in fact the second ones after La Bottine Souriante who got my attention, since they were the ones who, way back in the day, got mentioned on the OKP on one of the recurring “If you like Great Big Sea, you’ll also like…” threads.

Now, though, I just got email from somebody on the La Prûche Libre staff! He wrote to thank me for the support of their music and to offer me download codes for a couple more of their albums, which I gratefully accepted!

The first of the two albums he offered me is this one. As a long-time fan of La Bottine Souriante I absolutely know the name Yves Lambert. That legendary performer is in fact one of my strongest memories of seeing La Bottine back in 2000, because it was his voice I remember sounding rich and round and full. He’s happily still doing music even though he’s not involved with La Bottine anymore, and so I’d already decided to investigate his more recent endeavors. I didn’t, however, have this album yet!

And the second album is this one. As I hope I explained to the nice gentleman from La Prûche Libre, I wasn’t familiar with M. Lepage. The email I got says he unfortunately passed away last year, but I’ll be happy for the opportunity to learn a bit more about some of the longstanding performers of the genre and to see what they’ve contributed to this music I’ve come to love.

So yeah. Mes petites pouvoirs d’écriture en français, activez! Here’s hoping I replied to the nice man from La Prûche Libre coherently! And here’s to what promises to be a lovely expansion of my Quebec trad collection!